NEW HAVEN (AP) - A state official who helped send former Gov. John G. Rowland to prison in a corruption case told a federal grand jury that she received many of the same expensive hotel getaways, lavish dinners and limousine rides that were used to bribe the governor's office.

Yet Kristine Ragaglia made a deal for her testimony that spared her prosecution and allowed her to keep the $104,000-a-year state job she now has investigating government fraud.

Through sealed grand jury transcripts, FBI reports and personal diaries examined by The Associated Press, Ragaglia detailed how she took the luxuries while head of the state Department of Children and Families and helped steer a $57 million detention center contract to a developer who had provided gifts to Rowland.

Ragaglia, who ran the child protection agency from 1997-2003, testified that she sometimes wrote letters or placed phone calls to push the project along. Other times, she said, she just looked the other way.

All the while, the documents indicate, she carried on an affair with her supervisor in rooms given free at New York's Waldorf Astoria and Boston's Ritz-Carlton hotels. And though she said she never drank on the job, she acknowledged battling an alcohol problem so bad it has caused lingering memory problems.

Federal authorities agreed not to use Ragaglia's 2004 grand jury testimony about the Rowland administration against her.

Asked to comment Sunday night, Ragaglia declined to say why she didn't come forward when she suspected the deal was being fixed. But she noted that her cooperation helped send corrupt officials to prison.

"I did my part to make it right," she told the AP.

Ragaglia, a 44-year-old former assistant attorney general, left the child protection agency in 2003 amid the FBI's burgeoning investigation. After a brief second stint at the attorney general's office, she was hired later that year - about six months before Rowland's resignation - by the state's Department of Social Services as head of the fraud unit.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who has been criticized by Democrats for keeping on too many Rowland employees while campaigning for clean government, declined through a spokesman Sunday to comment on Ragaglia's grand jury testimony.

Ragaglia's admissions have never been made public because all those charged in the case avoided trials by striking plea deals.

Rowland pleaded guilty in late 2004 to a single corruption count and served 10 months in prison. He's now serving a four-month term of home confinement.

Developer William Tomasso and Peter Ellef, Rowland's top aide, also pleaded guilty to corruption and fraud charges, and each were sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison.

From its earliest planning in 1998, the Connecticut Juvenile Training School project was touted as Ragaglia's greatest hope for success. Rowland hailed it as a key step toward reforming an agency that was under federal oversight and reeling from a series of child deaths in state custody.

Rowland's administration steered the construction contract to Tomasso, a developer who secretly paid for repairs at Rowland's summer cottage and his vacations to Florida and Vermont.

Ellef and his deputy, Lawrence Alibozek, directed the effort. But the reform school came under the purview of Ragaglia's agency, and her diaries indicate that they brought her in on the deal early.

Ragaglia wrote in her diary in 1998 that Ellef introduced her to Tomasso and outlined plans to replace the antiquated Long Lane juvenile detention center.

Rowland made the plans public later that year after a teenager's suicide at Long Lane and Ragaglia helped fast-track the project.

Ragaglia's diaries paint a conflicting portrait: She enjoyed being near Rowland's inner circle but she also worried that her reputation would be ruined and cited Tomasso's "disconcerting" ties to the governor's office. She was excited that her agency - and Connecticut's children - could benefit from his work.

"It was pretty clear to me that I am a pawn in this whole thing - I guess I shouldn't care as long as I get what I want," Ragaglia wrote in late 1998, saying she cared most about getting a new reform school.

According to Ragaglia's testimony, she began receiving perks while she pushed for the deal. She told investigators that she joined Ellef, Alibozek and Tomasso for expensive dinners, limousine rides and vacations where alcohol flowed freely. Prosecutors describe the trips as bribes that Tomasso gave the Rowland administration to land the juvenile center contract.

In exchange, prosecutors say Tomasso got Long Lane repair work and joined the group on a tour of Ohio juvenile centers, giving him an insider's view of Connecticut's needs. Ragaglia told grand jurors she didn't argue with Tomasso's participation on the trip.

"Was part of the reason you didn't just say, 'Look, I'm not going to Ohio with Bill Tomasso,' the fact that you were having a personal relationship with Larry and this was an opportunity to get away for a couple of nights?" prosecutor Nora Dannehy asked before the grand jury.

"It was a factor," Ragaglia replied.

Ragaglia told investigators that she never knew who paid for the trips but assumed it was Alibozek, with whom she had a yearlong affair.

In the grand jury room, a prosecutor asked Ragaglia directly whether she thought the contract was being steered.

"That was my belief," Ragaglia said, according to a transcript.

Yet her involvement continued. She told the FBI that, while enjoying a $3,300 getaway to Boston's Ritz Carlton hotel in December 1998, she called a subordinate in Connecticut to try to secure the deal for Tomasso.

Tomasso officially landed the training school contract in April 1999 when a five-member state public works panel, which included Ragaglia, gave him the job.

The day after Tomasso's contract was announced, Ellef, Alibozek and Ragaglia slipped away for a night in New York at the Waldorf Astoria, according to the grand jury testimony and the FBI documents. The bill came to more than $2,700, which prosecutors say was paid for with Tomasso's money.

By 2002, the Rowland administration's dealings had drawn the attention of the FBI. Ragaglia agreed to cooperate and Alibozek resigned and pleaded guilty to a corruption charge, becoming a key FBI witness. He is still awaiting sentencing.

The Juvenile Training School, meanwhile, never lived up to its promise. Gov. Rell announced plans last year to shut it down by 2008, saying it was too much like a prison and wasn't rehabilitating the children.

Now divorced, Ragaglia told investigators that she is sober and no longer seeing Alibozek. But legal problems linger. She is among several defendants in a lawsuit by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who is trying to recover millions lost to Rowland-era corruption.

Because of grand jury secrecy, however, Ragaglia's 2004 testimony hasn't been filed in the state case.